


Tato

by sunnylil



Series: Dynasty [2]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mentions of childhood abuse, Prison, they talk a bit about Terry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 22:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16396025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnylil/pseuds/sunnylil
Summary: "Misha,I am not a mother that lies to her son. Some things I will not tell him until he is old enough to understand them. He is only five. There are many things he does not understand yet. He does understand that he has a father he does not know. So I ask him, Do you want to know him? And he says yes. I tell him that you are in prison and that he cannot go to the park with you.I am not a mother that says no to her son’s wishes. Not if I can understand them. So I tell him that we can visit his father.Yevgeny wants to see his father but he can only do that if you put us on your visitation list.Jailbird cannot be a good father. But Zhenya does not know that yet and he keeps asking. Who am I to say no to my son’s wishes?S."





	Tato

**Author's Note:**

> "Tato" means dad in ukrainian.  
> I decided to make series of oneshots about life after 906 :)  
> I'm not a native speaker, sorry for any mistakes.  
> Enjoy!

167 days. 552 to go.

Ian tries not to think about it too much, about the remaining days. It would drive him crazy, no pun intended. Instead, he tries to focus on the good stuff. _Gratitude_. How grateful can you be if you live in a goddamn cement cage? How grateful can you be if the food’s so bad that your diet consists of commissary granola bars and dick? (The latter is nothing to complain about, though.) How grateful can you be if you’re family stopped visiting after two months, because they’re all too busy with their own shit?

He’s spiralling, so he takes a deep breath while making his way through the corridors to his cell. _Focus on the good stuff._ He’s been on the phone with Mandy, and she seems to be doing really good. Got a job as part of the make-up team in a theatre and a new boyfriend. That’s good. Mickey passed his GED, that’s good to. By the time he arrives at the cell door, his pulse has calmed down. It spikes right back up at the sight that greets him inside, though.

“What happened?”

Mickey’s sitting on the lower bunk bed; face white as a sheet, clutching a piece of paper.

Ian rushes to his side, his blood rushing in his ears. _Please, god, don’t let it be -_

“Mick?”

The older man passes him the piece of paper without saying anything.

It’s a handwritten letter and Ian feels the blood leave his face when he reads the first word.

_Misha,_

“Svetlana?” He calls out, gaping at Mickey. But he doesn’t get a reaction, so he keeps reading.

_I am not a mother that lies to her son. Some things I will not tell him until he is old enough to understand them. He is only five. There are many things he does not understand yet. He does understand that he has a father he does not know. So I ask him, Do you want to know him? And he says yes. I tell him that you are in prison and that he cannot go to the park with you._

_I am not a mother that says no to her son’s wishes. Not if I can understand them. So I tell him that we can visit his father._

_Yevgeny wants to see his father but he can only do that if you put us on your visitation list._

_Jailbird cannot be a good father. But Zhenya does not know that yet and he keeps asking. Who am I to say no to my son’s wishes?_

_S._

Ian rereads the letter twice before he’s able to collect himself.

“So, uh…”

That’s when he sees the photograph.

“Holy shit!”

Mickey’s starring at it like he’s in another dimension and not sitting right next to Ian.

Ian pushes his own feelings to the back of his head and gently touches Mickey’s arm.

“Mick…? Are you okay?”

The touch makes Mickey snap out of it and for the first time since Ian entered the cell five minutes ago, their eyes lock.

“Are you okay,” Ian repeats.

“His face looks exactly like mine. _Exactly_. I could show you a picture of –“ Mickey stops himself.

Ian keeps rubbing his arm, waiting for him to continue.

“Jailbird cannot be good father,” Mickey scoffs, “She’s right though. Why would I want him to know what kind of a fuck-up his dad is? He’s got a good life, right? You said, Svetlana married some rich dude. Right? He’s probably going to a fancy school. He doesn’t need to-“

“Stop it,” Ian demands softly, “You’re not a fuck-up.”

“Oh come the fuck on, Ian. Don’t do that.”

“All right. You’re a convicted felon, who’s gonna be on parole for the next ten years.”

He wants to say a lot more, but he doesn’t get to. The door to their cell slides open, and one of the CO barks at them.

“Cell search! Up against the wall, now.”

Ian groans, but obliges, not looking for any trouble.

Minutes later the CO leaves with an unsatisfied look on his face. He didn’t find anything.

Ian tosses the blankets and pillows back on the bed, before turning around to face Mickey, who’s running his hands over his face.

“Look,” Ian starts, but Mickey waves him off.

“I gotta get out of here. See you at dinner.”

He doesn’t get a chance to reply and sighs heavily. Isn’t the letter supposed to be a good thing? Smiling mildly, he picks the picture up and looks at it. He hasn’t seen Yevgeny in years and he can’t help but wonder what milestones he has missed in his life. He wants to know everything there is to know about this boy, but it isn’t his decision to make.

 

* * *

 

Ian finds Mickey in the library, crouched on the floor, engrossed in a battered version of _A Game Of Thrones._ He slumps down next to him.

“Didn’t I say _See you at dinner_ , Firecrotch?” Mickey grunts eventually.

“Missed ya.” Ian grins.

Mickey groans and closes the book. “What?”

“You’re not a fuck-up. You love him. Isn’t that enough?”

“How the fuck do you know if I love him? I don’t even _know_ him.”

“You care about him. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t beat yourself up about not being good enough for him. And you’ll get to know him.” Ian pauses and double checks if they’re alone, before reaching up to Mickey’s face to make him look at him. “What are you afraid of Mick?”

“Jesus, do we really need to talk this out?” Mickey huffs.

_Yes_ , Ian wants to say, _because things tend to blow up epically if we don’t_. But he doesn’t. He’ll come around and, again, it’s not his decision to make.

“Don’t you have to get your meds before chow time?”

Ian sighs, while running his hand over his face. “Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

They barely talk, not at dinner and not afterwards. He stops Mickey from purposefully getting into a fight by kicking his shin very hard under the table, which earns him the Eyebrows, but whatever. The last thing Mickey needs right now is a few days in the SHU, trapped in with his thoughts.

If it were any other circumstances Ian would have strangled Mickey for juggling his foot since light-out. The movement irritates him more and more with each passing minute, but instead of snapping at his boyfriend, he presses a kiss to his neck. As if he had waited for a cue, Mickey stops jiggling and starts talking instead.

“What are five year olds even like?”

“I don’t know. Probably talking up a storm.”

“When I was five, Terry had me as a lookout on his drug runs. I’d wait in the car and honk if I’d see a cop or something.”

“I don’t think Svetlana switched branches.”

Mickey snorts and flips over to look at him.

“I’m not a good dad.”

“You don’t know that.”

Mickey swallows hard, before focussing on a point over Ian’s head

“I couldn’t even _look_ at him, Ian. I couldn’t –“

Maybe he needed the darkness to say that, maybe he needed the reassurance that they’d be alone. Ian cups his face, stroking his thumb over his cheek.

“Nobody’s blaming you for that. But you got around. And you took care of him. And it’s probably gonna be easier now. He’s not looking for a kind of superhero-figure. He just wants to know who you are.”

Mickey leans into Ian’s touch and closes his eyes for a second.

“She’s not asking you to move in with them or anything. If you don’t feel like it, you don’t have to see them ever again afterwards. But I know that you’ll beat yourself up for years if you turn this down.”

“Why would she even try to – She’s off with her rich ass geriatric viagroid and probably congratulates herself on a daily basis that she made it out of that dump we’ve been living in. Why would she bring any of this up?”

“She’d do anything for him. She’s not doing this for herself, I’m pretty sure she would like to forget about anything as much as you do. But she’d do anything for him and if Yevgeny’s asking for you... Maybe she wants to scare him off to avoid further questions. Maybe she wants to state an example: _That’s that bad man and you’re better off without him in your life_.”

Mickey scoffs. “He’s _five._ You think he’d understand that?”

Ian shrugs. “I don’t know. Does it really matter? She always wanted you to be more involved. Maybe that’s where this is coming from.”

“How involved can someone be from inhere?”

“Mick … Do you want to see him or not?”

“He’s my son, man. It’s incredibly fucked up, but he’s still my son.”

“I know,” Ian whispers softly, “I know.”

 

* * *

 

It’s been five days since Ian found Mickey sitting there, holding Svetlana’s letter. In high contrast to the frozen figure back then, Mickey’s now pacing their tiny cell. Ian’s growing more and more anxious with each passing minute. Mickey doesn’t pace. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all. Maybe he _did_ push Mickey into this. The cell door slides open.

“Milkovich. Visitor.”

“I’ll be here when you come back,” Ian reassures him and adds jokingly, “It’s not like I could go anywhere.”

The time passes excruciatingly slow. He does five sets of push-ups and three sets of sit-ups, tries to solve a cross-word-puzzle, and read, but he can’t focus at all. His mind is too busy thinking about worst-case scenarios.

He almost jumps out of his skin when the door finally slides open again and a poker-faced Mickey enters.

“Jesus, Gallagher, have you been sitting here like I went to a fucking war?”

Ian jut crosses his arms, waiting.

“What are you looking at me like that,” Mickey spits, “I didn’t kill her or anything.”

“How did it go?”

Mickey shrugs, wiping his hand over his mouth. “All right, I guess. I don’t know.”

Ian supresses a sigh. Step-by-step walk through, then.

“Did he talk to you?”

“Yeah. He showed me his, uh, his little action figures. Spiderman or something.”

“What did Svetlana say?”

“Not much. She taught him Russian. They had a whole conversation without me, of fucking course.”

Ian laughs. Of course they would. Mickey shoots him a bemused look, before starting to laugh, too.

“He’s doing well. Going to a fancy private school, I fucking knew it. Can you believe it? That kid’s gonna be smarter than me in no time.”

It takes Ian a moment to place the look on Mickey’s face, but when he does, his chest threatens to burst. It’s pride - but it fades as quickly as it appeared.

“Sounds good?” It’s more a question than a statement.

“Yeah. It was. It was good.”

 

* * *

 

A week later, the first drawing arrives. It’s a dragon, that’s dancing with a whale, at least that’s how they interpret it. They spent a lot of time trying to interpret it. In the right hand corner it says in messy handwriting: _For my dad. Yev_

Maybe Svetlana’s right and being locked up automatically means that Mickey can’t be a good dad.

But the drawings keep coming, so she does give him a chance.

But the drawings keep coming, so Mickey will keep trying.

Ian adds _Yevgeny’s drawings_ to the list of things he’s grateful for. He’s grateful that the boy is back in their lives, but even more for the way Mickey smiles when a new envelope arrives.


End file.
